ToHit or Not ToHit - that is the question (a defence guide)

Post subject: ToHit or Not ToHit - that is the question (a defence guide)

Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:02 am

Ladder Boss

Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2005 4:17 pmPosts: 381

Hi guys,

As promised, Ebon and I will be posting what we hope will be a definitive and accurate overview of the somewhat elaborate accuracy and defence system that sits at the heart of everything inside CoH/V. This is an extension of the debate we started about SR stalkers/scrappers and the ultimate pvp road warrior - so will follow that gist too.

We plan to do this as a nuts and bolts guide (with plenty of simple examples) but also to separately include the maths for those who are mathematically inclined (retarded)!

If you can't wait here's a link to good (but fairly mathematical) guide from coldfront:

What we plan to do is simplify that further with plenty of good, practical examples, and keep this up to date for i7 and further updates as the defence/accuracy engine evolves.

If you have any specific/niggling questions in connection with defence v accuracy post em here and we'll try to look at them - otherwise Ebon and I will be updating this with the first overview over the next few days (if we can do it before Easter). All help welcome too.

OK. Here's the first stab at this guys. As promised the aim is to provide a refreshingly simple guide to the somewhat elaborate accuracy and defence system that sits at the heart of CoH game system.

If you already know a lot about the various tohitbuff and tohitdebuff equations that make up the system then this guide may not provide much interest to you. On the other hand if you've ever, like me, thought "wait a sec. I get the general picture but how do I get the upperhand against X or Y villains" or "what hero/villain archetype is the best the PvP (player v player) game" then read on.

My starting point was PvP and the Help thread "the ultimate pvp road warrior" - which myself, Blastor, Ebon Hawk, Mess, Mom, Chiefette, Steele and many others have been debating for weeks.

The heart of that debate quickly became a discussion of whether very high defence archetype, such as a Super Reflex Scrapper (or Stalker) would be more effective than a Controller, Defender, Corruptor or Dominator in the PvP game.

Four of the most commonly discussed (but never agreed) archetypes in this debate became:

1. A spines/super reflex stalker (very high defense, assassins strike and ranged attacks). 2. A dark/super reflex scrapper (tougher than a stalker and with an 'accuracy' debuff on each hit) 3. A kinetics/psy defender (a debuffing, self-healing ranged blaster that would attack endurence instead of health). 4. A storm/x controller or defender type (stop them hitting you first)

Now if you, like me until recently, are thinking "this sounds too technical/boring already - but what exactly is an 'accuracy debuff' and how does it relate to defense" then this guide is written for you.

IntroductionBefore completing this guide I had a broad understanding that there were really two kinds of accuracy and that one of them, the infamous 'tohitBuff', is more important than the ordinary 'accuracy' buff (whatever that is exactly). But my understanding was never really any deeper than that. Except I knew that the 'tohitbuff' was available on some powers (such as Aim). But how exactly this ridiculously named 'tohitbuff' scaled or worked with or against any my defenses was always a bit too much of a mystery.

This first post will hopefully help demystify that and give you some rough and ready tools to start building or balancing powers for PvP or to help with your main PvE game.

The 'tohitbuff' Firstly let's deal with this by removing the word 'tohitbuff' for a second or two. I think this word and similar developer words used throughout the CoH/V game are the main culprits for making the defense v accuracy debate more complex than it really is.

To understand how tohitbuff, accuracy and defense all work together we're going to use the following example (pinched from Arcanaville's more technical post - see below for details):

Two MarksmenImagine two trained marksmen standing in a field together. Each of them is equally skilled with their weapons. Each of them picks up a different weapon. One picks up a highly accurate sniper's rifle and the other a rusty, old handgun. That in essence how the CoH game works. Each of us, in other words each CoH/CoV archetype (marksman in this example), is equally skilled and every power (weapon) we choose has a different accuracy level. Both your skill level (called your base 'tohit' level by the devs) and our powers' (weapons) accuracy can be sharpend (buffed) and unsharpened (debuffed).

In the normal (PvE) game your base skill (tohit) level is fixed at 75%. Don't ask me why it's not 100%. It just isn't. Doesn't make sense to me either but it's how the game works. A 75% skill (tohit) level means that 3 out of every 4 hits will land on the same level target. In theory some powers have a slightly less and some have some greater accuracy than 100% and I'll come onto this in one second. Of course it wouldn't make sense for weapon to have more than a 100% chance of hitting you in the real world but let's leave this aside as for a while.

the 'tohit' calculationEach time you attempt a hit with one of your powers the game performs a quick calculation to check the odds of you hitting based in your overall skill (tohit) level and the accuracy of your power. As this most powers have a 100% accuracy then the quick calculation is straightforward:

skill (tohit) 75% x power accuracy 100% = 75%

Of course if you did have one of those rare powers with less than a 100% accuracy (Fulcrum Shift for example). Then the quick calculation is the same:

skill (tohit) 75% x accuracy 90% = 67.5%

Inspiration ...Keeping this simple while we build up to more useful examples, you can probably see that having 4 out of 4 hits landing instead of just 3 is more than interesting. It might be life or death!

The easiest way to do this - to see how the maths works at least - is to imagine using an Insight Inspiration. As you know, Insights provide one of the cheapest quick boosts to your overall accuracy as they provide an immediate 25% boost to overall accuracy. Or do they?

Well yes and no.

Insights actually provide a 25% boost to your skill/tohit level and therefore your overall chance of hitting (called the nettohit by the devs). But strictly speaking accuracy insights do not effect your power accuracy.

But does this distinction really make that much difference?

Not so much in a normal PvE game against same level foes, no. But in PvP, against high level defenses and against higher-level mobs, leiutenants, bosses and AV's then yes. When you get into the middle-game (from mid-teen levels upwards) you also start coming up against tohit debuffing powers and defense debuffing powers and, our against our central discussion about the ultimate pvp road warrior: High defense? High accuracy? Or high debuffing? Then it gets more interesting and we'll come on to that in the next post.

To finish up this post, lets round up by talking about powers and other ways to increase your overall accuracy through your tohit (skill) in particular:

Tactics ...In fact, there aren't too many powers in the game which do improve your character's base skill (tohit) level - which was a revelation to me because I also didn't know what my base skill (tohit) level was in the first place or where it came from!

Remember: base skill (tohit) in the PvE game is 75%. In PvP base skill (tohit) is only 50%.

One of the most important powers in the PvP game - Tactics - shows most clearly how this works. Just like Insight Inspirations and powers such as Aim, Build Up and Power Build Up, Tactics provides a skill (tohit) bonus. And just to make it nice and confusing for you, the bonus varies depending on your character. Most characters (archetypes) receive a 10% skill (tohit) bonus all the time Tactics is running (toggled on).

So your base skill (tohit) becomes 75% + 10% = 85%

By the time you have added 3 (SO) +tohitbuff enhancements this becomes a 16% tohit bonus (20% for defenders and 12% for everyone else) and you can see that you're finally getting close to that 100% chance of landing every hit. In fact there is always a 5% chance (safety catch) built into the game so that even if you had a ...

base skill (tohit) 75% + 16% tactics + 100% aim = 191% overall chance

... then there is still that 5% (safety catch) chance you will miss.

Got it?

This overall chance is known by the devs and frequently referred to us your nettohit. It is always a calculation and is always based on your skill(tohit) level, your power accuracy, any other tohit buffs and accuracy and tohitdebuffs. More about the subtleties of those next time.

But why do we need the tohitbuffs at all? Why not just use +acc enhancements? The answer lies in what happens when and how your skill(tohit) level falls below 100%. If this is new to you be ready for a surprise ...

... briefly speaking, and introducing the next post, your skill (tohit) level is properly calculated after deducting your foe's defensive (skill) level. This is one of the most straight-forward parts of the maths:

High defense character such as super-reflex scrappers and stalkers, force field-based controllers, defenders and masterminds can all reach defense levels, in some combat scenarios, in excess of 30-40%. To work our how much extra accuracy you need to stand a even 100% chance (before the 5% saftey catch) of hitting these archetypes all you need to do is deduct their total defense level from you total skill(tohit) level.

With a high-defense AT such as these guys (above) and a typical player AT without Aim or Build Up you can see that:

But it get worse as your power accuracy bonus that used to maintain your overall tohit accuracy (through a single +acc enhancement SO) in PvE (to 118%) is now only delivering ..

36% (as above) x 130% = 46.8%! Less than 1 in 2 chance of hitting!

A typical AT not even running Tactics is down to ...

50% - 30% = 20% x 130% = 26%! Just about a 1 chance in 4 of hitting!

This guy could have even have 3 +acc SO in there and still only stand a 1 in 3 chance of hitting anything as 20% x 190% = 38%

And so on.

If youre' fighting a high-defense AT, lieutenant, boss or AV then the rule is that you need to increase your skill (tohit) levels first and your power accuracy second.

Next post: Defence v accuracy in more detail with more ready to go examples, the answer to the high defense v high accuracy pvp road warrior AT question, other related examples for the PvE game (how does rank / relative level work) and more about mez defense, accuracy (tohit) and defense debuffing v tohit accuracy. And the changes to defense promised in i7!

Nice post SB... hopefully that will make sense to people, it's certainly well described SB and I have been consulting a fair bit behind the scenes on this, and we're both happy to field any questions or clarify any further points.

As an unashamed number-cruncher, I personally think it's useful for all players of the game to have an appreciation of just what factors affect something as basic as if you are going to hit with a power or not, or likewise how likely something is to hit you.

Absolutely. I should have mentioned/credited Ebon with the co-writing this but the system doesn't allow it. Ebon and I have been going backwards and forwards (me backwards, Ebon forwards) for over 2 weeks on some of the details!

Well i read through the most part of that post and finally got confised lol.

I have been thinking about Betty's accuarcy since i respecced her at level 24 and added leadership skills.

I took the set so that i could get Tactics because as you know i have to hit to heal etc, but i have since thought that as Tactics only gives me +15% accuracy and one SO would give me +33% accuracy then i could drop the End eating leaderships skills in favour of one slot on my powers, thus doubling my accuracy.

Am i right or totally going to mess up my alt?

Obviously there is the benefit to the whole team with Tactics too, not just me

_________________Be Bold, Be Brave, Be Brought back from the dead by Betty!@Tidgy Tigeress

If you find ToHit/Defence calculations confusing, just take Leadership pool without hesitation if you'll play PvP seriously...

With Tactics apart from the accuracy bonus you can also see Stalkers (the ones not using Stealth with Hide), and Assault also gives you resistance to Placate & Taunt powers in addition to damage bonus.

As far as I understand from Shadow's post Tactics increases the base ToHit buff value off your toon while accuracy SO increases the accuracy of your attack power.

You multiply Net ToHit Value (Your Characters value minus your opponent's defence) with the overall accuracy value of your attack power. The result is the percentage of your chance to hit that opponent...

Ok, one question to our experts Shadow & Ebon:

You can add both ToHit SO and Accuracy SO to Nova Form (Not attack powers). So which SO affects what in this case?

Part Two: Defense, will look at the defense part of the equation in more detail with some more simple, useable examples as there are several wrinkles in this overall scheme. Mez defense being one big one that has also been murky to me for a long, long time.

We'll hopefullly get that online sometime over the weekend/next week. This should also help you Betty.

One of the other issues to flush out is different attack v defense tactics as Blastor has already highlighted one with this comment:

Blastor wrote:

With Tactics (11%), Aim (100%) & Build Up (70% I think) on top of my base ToHit Value (50%) I get 231%. When I deduct 120% defence of MoG Scrapper it's 111%. Then adding 3 ToHit Buff SOs to both Aim & Build Up is a waste of 6 slots since I'm already above 95% ToHit Buff level.

You're quite right Blast.

Without a shadow of doubt powers such as Aim, Build Up and Power Build Up are the best and probably only real counterfoils to a high-defense AT in PvP or a high level foe in PvE. But aside from Tactics these powers are all fairly short duration with fairly long refresh times:

Aim and Build Up last just 10 seconds each and take 90 to recharge (45 seconds with 3 recharge reduction SO's etc).

So without hasten, siphon speed etc you could have both these powers (if you were so lucky) and still only have 20 seconds of uptime out of every 45 and so it would seem the best idea would be to:

a) take both; but also tob) take just enough buffs to reach your tohit cap on each; andc) use one after the other d) fully slot them (say 4 recharge SO's) to provide maximum uptime.e) take hasten too (if you can squeeze it into your build)

I nearly always end up taking hasten and superspeed for just this reason and also to stack superspeed with a stealth power for full invisibility. That's another story though.

There is some disagreement on all these stats though as there is no universal confirmation source on exactly how much of a tohit or accuracy bonus some of these powers provide. There is also 100% confusion caused by guides like sherksilver that label some tohit bonuses as accuracy bonues etc and vice versa.

I was planning on double-checking these values for part two: defense as although sherksilver, for example, reports that Aim provides a +Acc (100%) buff I've seen it stated (by the Arcanaville guide for a start) that Aim is a tohit buff. As we're only fairly certain that Aim provides a 100% tohit buff I'll check it again but it does seems excessive (and not in need of adding tohitbuff SO's to at all) at this level - as even the most ardent defense build is never going to be higher than 50% defense (I think)! It will all be in Part Two folks.

My personal experience with Build Up with my claws scrapper and claws stalker (a "50% +Acc buff" and a "62.5% +Acc buff" according to Sherksilvers) is that both seem to work great without any extra tohit SO's.

I'm also hoping to find time to create a simple PvP calculator for the website (in Flash) to enable instant comparisons too. Have fun meantime.

There is a pretty easy rule of thumb (as outlined in Arcanaville's guide) to deciding if something is a tohit buff or an accuracy buff.

Anything that increases the ability of a hero (or villain) to hit generically with any attack is a tohit buff. Anything that increases the chances of hitting with a specific power is an accuracy increase (Accuracy SO's are in fact the only thing I can think of that fall into this category)

Anything that increases the ability of a hero (or villain) to hit generically with any attack is a tohit buff.

That's why I said we're "fairly certain".

The only thing niggling doubt I have is why those otherwisely expert planners (sherksilvers etc) always seem to mix the labels up. I can't help wondering if powers like Aim provide both an accuracy and a tohit bonus and that's why the guides are ambigious. I hope not.

It also doesn't make too much sense to me that you can add tohit enhancements to them when the tohit bonus is so high in the first place. Something seems odd there. That's all.

Here's part two of the guide, now homing in on the player v player (pvp) defense levels - where everyone is the same level - compared to the normal game (pve) where mobs can have very different levels to us.

Let's recap on Part One: Accuracy first, add in some maths in for anyone that way inclined and then look at some typical pvp mob situations:

Your ability to hit anything is calculated each time you try it and is subject to a quick check on your current skill (tohit) level, the accuracy of the power you're using AND the defense level of your opponent!

Your current skill (tohit) level (recap):Your current skill (tohit) level comprises your base skill (tohit) level which is set by the game for all archetypes at 75% for PvE and 50% for PvP. The devs call this, to keep it confusing, your base tohit. To simply this we've called it your skill level. Your base tohit level can be increased with tohitbuffs. These can be tohitbuff enhancements or the buffs from other players, etc. One of the best tohit buffing powers is Tactics which typically adds a tohit bonus of 10% (unslotted). Other tohit buffing powers include the likes of Aim, Build Up, Power Build Up, etc. You can also use Insight inspirations to boost your current skill (tohit) level as these also provide tohit bonuses. Please read Part One: Accuracy again if you're still unclear about this.

Accuracy (recap):Accuracy in CoH/V is power specific and comes in the form of accuracy enhancements that can be added to each of your powers. A Single Origin +acc enhancement will typically add a 30% boost to your accuracy and is mathematically applied to your current nettohit level at the time/point you try and hit something. As most powers have an level 100% accuracy to begin with then you can see that your typical start-up PvE character has a:

Defense (recap):Your defense level, on the other hand, acts as a counter-foil to your opponents nettohit and is a straight deduction. All players begin the game without any defense (although characters such as Stalkers have a 5% defense bonus with Hide running) and so boosting your defense levels is an obvious and sure-fire method of cutting down the amount of hits that will land against you. As this is a straight deduction you can quickly see that a 10% boost to your defense means that an opponent trying to hit needs to have the same 10% boost to his nettohit level to maintain his chances.

Or does he/she?

What if that "player" was a mob minion? Or a boss? Or an AV? And what happens if that boss is 2 levels higher than you are? Let's see.

First some maths, just in case you want to check any of this on a calculator/spreadsheet. We promised this ages ago. Ignore it if you're not interested in maths. You won't need this for the rest of the post.

The basic formula:NetToHit = BaseToHit - Defense

As both BaseToHit and Defense is dependent on any extra buffs, debuffs and so on the real formula is:

In addition to this basic formula there is that 5% (1 in 20 shots) built-in chance (safety catch) that everyone will hit/miss some of the time.

Cool. But how does relate to mob levels?

Well in the PvE game mob base tohit levels are also set across all AT's and just happens to be that minions have the same base skill(tohit) level as we do in PVP but they scale up according to level. This is changing in i7 but should have the same effect.

Let's look at what this means in terms of defense v attack strategy as a lot of the examples will be also be similar to facing different PvP defense builds. I was also just looking at this with my new storm/dark defender as I was trying to evaluate whether I should take Maneuvers or Assault or both. Recently I've always been taking Assault!

The actual skill(tohit) bonus increase is approximately 9% per level but is as follows (courtesy of Arcanaville):

+0 1.00000+1 1.09400+2 1.18670+3 1.26670+4 1.36000

This may well be far too academic (i.e pointlessly detailed) but at least you can look up the maths quickly and apply your own tohit/defense ideas for your own alts.

Obviously the big gainers in the tohit or not to hit discussion are the higher defense alts who can crank up there defenses to 40-50% and reduce even a +3 AV's chance of landing a blow to just 45% even though that's probably enough to kill most of them!

Of course mob villains, just like player AT's can also have extra defense and some of them (e.g. Behomefs) even have Invincibility and Paragon Protectors even have Moment of Glory and Elude!

More on defense types in Part Three: Defense Types and Strategies but to be honest this is covered in great detail Arcanaville's existing defense guide:

To wrap up Part Two: Defense let's finish with some more attack v defense examples:

I started saying that I was beginning to wonder if Maneuvers provides better value than Assault in PVP situations - if you had to choose between them. To be honest I'm not sure now whereas I was previously sure that it didn't! Whereas Assault provides an immediate boost to the damage level to all your powers - comparable to a single origin damage enhancement (or 3 training enhancements) - it doesn't have any effect on the tohit/defense question.

So how can we compare them?

Well I started to do a whole load of maths on this but it's too diffult to summarise because of all the multiple variables (both Assault and Maneuvers have different bonus levels based on your AT and so on) so I've had to throw the towel in but not before saying that in one "typical" example worked through Assault would have provided +143 points extra damage over ten attacks with a defender (and +77 with a scrapper) compared to 26 points of damage saved (19 on a scrapper). This does look like a big points advantage for Assault over Maneuvers although Maneuvers can also be slotted for extra defense (and roughly double the damage saved) but it's all fairly arbritary and was based on a high-damage dealing power.

But if you are an offensive blaster or high-damage orientated AT and you were trying to choose between the two powers (because of the slots/endurence issue for me at least) then it does look like Assault would provide twice the value to you. On the other hand, a controller or controller-style defender or Dominator without much offensive power would only be marginally better off taking Maneuvers.

I couldn't, with confidence, say that before. But nearly 3 hours of maths and spreadsheets later I can.

It's potentially going to depend on the specific attack and AT Blast..

for example

Energy Torrent (Blaster) is a cone that would be ranged.

Eviscerate (scrapper) is a cone that would be melee.

But I don't think any of them are AoE since I think that's only used for attacks which have a central point and do damage to all foes within a certain range of that point (ie are always circular areas of effect)

I thought it was a good time to re-open this thread after a discussion with Blast this morning, yes this morning, on Mez resistance and the new IO/set bonuses relating to it, as, the devs are using some phrasing which I don't understand.

The jist of the discussion was the descriptive text used on some of the set bonuses which attribute some powers, Doctored Wounds for example, with a '+MezRez (Terrorised) (mag 2.2%)' whereas most of the bonuses offering a similar res improvement using wording along the lines '+1.6% res (Fire,Cold)' <- note the lack of reference to 'mag' in there.

A +1.6% res bonus is easy to understand, or easy enough: If the rez duration of a mex effect was 10 seconds, say a 10 second fear (terrorised effect) then a 1.6% improved rez will reduce the time to 9.84 seconds. Well that's what I presume it does?

But why use the phrase 'mag 2.2%'? I presume it's a purely descriptive mistake. Or is it? Because it seems within the realm of possibility that this could actually be a mag 2.2 bonus as many toons have no fear resistance at all and so giving a toon a spanking new 2.2 mag lvl seems reasonable (and pretty darn good, and it is quite rare) whereas a mere 2.2% rez improvement isn't really that good at all.

So does anyone know? Anyone tested the results?

The reason for posting this here (Blast) is that mez 'defence' was something I wanted to add to this thread anyway. Instead of rewriting this I've pasted in the relevant section from Arcanville's excellent guide (see top link for details):

What is mez defense?

"Mez defense" is the generic term sometimes used to refer to powers that protect against mez. (Using terminology originally used by geko when explaining mez) there are two types of mez "defense" :mez protection and mez resistance. Neither of these is directly related to Defense in terms of damage mitigation, but its worth reviewing.

The basics of mez are: everyone has a threshold that mez effects must break through in order for the mez effect to take hold. Without any mez defense, everyone has a base mez level of -1. All mez powers have a mez magnitude. When a mez power lands, it adds its magnitude to your mez level. A hero with mez level of -1 that gets hit by a magnitude 3 hold has mez level of 2 (-1 + 3). Any mez level higher than zero means the target is mezzed. Mez protection continuously subtracts its associated defense magnitude from your mez level while the power is running. Someone running a mez defense power with mez protection magnitude 10 has a mez level of -11 (-1 - 10). If hit with a mag 3 hold, mez level increases to -8 (-11 + 3). It would take 3 more such holds for the mez level to reach +1.

Mez effects last for a certain period of time, then expire. Mez resistance allows a target to shake off mez effects faster. So instead of a mez effect lasting ten seconds, it might last eight.

Mez protection and mez resistance are not true Defense or Resistance, but its useful to understand and is often confused with true Defense and Resistance.

All mez protection powers in melee defense sets scale up with level, with tankers getting maximum protection at level 35, and scrappers at level 45.

*** Note: in I6 mez protection powers were reduced from their previous levels. Maximum protection for tanks and scrappers used to be about magnitude 15, which in effect means controllers needed 6 holds to break protection. In I6, this has been tested to happen at 3 or 4 holds, which implies mez protection has been roughly cut in half.

And Blast, this is an example of what I mean. Mez restance increases on mobs appreciably higher than us and decreases on mobs appreciably lower than us. But that it's it. Mag lvls only effect whether the mez is actually having an effect on us at that particular time. In PVP it's our mez resistance which counts (and the reason the IO/set bonuses are so great). Otherwise, mag levels only effect whether the mez in actually effecting you or not (exactly as Arcanville describes it above).

I hope that make sense

But if anyone knows any more about those strange '+MezRez (Terrorised) (mag 2.2%)' descriptions and what they really mean then Blast and I would be grateful.

The jist of the discussion was the descriptive text used on some of the set bonuses which attribute some powers, Doctored Wounds for example, with a '+MezRez (Terrorised) (mag 2.2%)' whereas most of the bonuses offering a similar res improvement using wording along the lines '+1.6% res (Fire,Cold)' <- note the lack of reference to 'mag' in there.

Mez, rez, res, very confusing ...

I now understand what you mean mate. During our discussion this morning, I thought you were confused with some description stating the set bonus by mag percentage and some by duration reduction for mez attacks...

Quote:

+1.6% res (Fire,Cold)' <- note the lack of reference to 'mag' in there.

Mag value has nothing to do with damage attacks though, Mag is related to mez attacks, such as hold, stun, immobilise, fear etc..., it defines how many stacked hits you have to receive to get mezzed, and how long the inactivity period you will receive once mezzed.

For example, we have 2 ATs, one having 4mag base and the other with 5mag base protection for immobilise, and we have one attacker with 3mag immobilise power. It'll take that attacker 2 stacked hits (6mag) to immobilise both ATs, however, the one with 5 mag will be free from the mez effect sooner than the other one.

Quote:

Doctored Wounds for example, with a '+MezRez (Terrorised) (mag 2.2%)'

As far as I know these type of set bonus above only reduces the time under mez effect but I don't know how. I have 2 options though:

1) They either increase your mag so you get affected less (say your fear mag is 1 and affected by a mag2 fear attack. Once you have that set bonus your fear mag is increased by 2.2% and the mez duration is reduced accordingly).

2) Or they simply reduce the mez duration by 2.2% after the mag calculation.

Oops. I used the wrong example, you're right blast, but I'm not mixing these up:

blast wrote:

I think you're mixing mez attacks with damage attacks mate.

But having now searched all the descriptions again (using Mids Hero Designer) I can only find '+MezRez (Terrorised) (mag 2.2%)' style descriptions and nothing similar the example I gave for a proper mez resistance. So ...

I can only guess still that all these effects are, in fact, purely 2.2% reductions in effect duration - which is quite small but if you did want to max out your fear resistance, for example, then I guess 5 x 2.2% isn't too bad (reducing a 10 second fear duration to about 8.9 seconds) so I guess that's inline with other mez res buffs/debuffs from the sets - but it's not enough to get excited about.

these two can (and do) work inconjunction. Mez resistance will effectively decrease the 'tick' times for a mez effects Mag to drop.

So Blast, you're right in your example:

Blastor wrote:

For example, we have 2 ATs, one having 4mag base and the other with 5mag base protection for immobilise, and we have one attacker with 3mag immobilise power. It'll take that attacker 2 stacked hits (6mag) to immobilise both ATs, however, the one with 5 mag will be free from the mez effect sooner than the other one.

But to add in an extra layer... if the At with mag4 base protection also has Mez Resistance that's appropriate, they could find themselves free of the Mez effect sooner, since their Mag level ticks down faster.

Does that make sense?

So, basically both Protection and Resistance serve a useful purpose, and work together, rather than as an either/or setup.

yep we knew that - thanks Ebo. But this morning Blast thought that the mag lvls somehow directly affected mez duration (which obviously it doesn't)but equally it wasn't clear what exactly a '+MezRes (Terrorised) (mag 2.2%)' set bonus actually did. That was the hub of it.

We're still guessing that the 'mag' bit in the statement is a red herring and that really it's just a straight 2.2% reduction in mez duration (once hit) - but do you know any better mate?

No, I don't know any better, but suspect you're right that it's a simple 2.2% duration reduction.

Blast is semi-right in that Mag levels do result in some differences in mez effect duration, in the way he earlier pointed out.... but that's because the mez system is essentially binary (you are either effected or you're not) and mag values change by integer amounts at fixed time intervals.

But it's only the interaction between Mag level and the Mag of the victims mez Protection that can cause differences.

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